Hedge Trimmer Electrocution
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio Date: August 10, 1991 Story On August 10, 1991, Connie and John Allen of Cincinnati, Ohio, who were excitedly expecting the birth of twins, had an unexpected encounter with electricity that almost left their unborn babies fatherless. "It was Saturday afternoon, and we were having company the next day, and I wanted the yard to look beautiful," Connie said, "so I asked John to trim the hedges. They were old hedge trimmers, and they were falling apart, but they still worked, so he thought he'd just use them real fast." Because the three-pronged grounding plug on the trimmers was a little wobbly, John connected it to a two-pronged adapter, plugged the adapter into a power source, and started to work on the hedges, which grew along a metal chain-link fence. Things went smoothly until John reached for the fence for support, and a powerful electric current shot through his body, leaving him rigid and erect, even after his hold on the trimmers and the fence had released. "All of a sudden, I heard a groan," said Connie, who had been sweeping leaves in the yard. "So I ran over and I touched his back, and he just kind of fell over. I called his name, but he wouldn't respond. His lips were turning blue, and I thought, 'He's dead. But how did he die?' I almost wanted to think that it was a joke, but I knew that he wasn't going to wake up. I had taken CPR before, but I was so distracted that I couldn't think of following the correct steps." She did manage to give him artificial respiration, but to no avail. "So I decided that if I screamed as loud as I could, maybe somebody would hear." "Help!" Connie yelled. "Please help us!" Julia Krienbaum, a neighbor, heard Connie's cries and called 911. Reed Bogart, another neighbor, who lived two doors away, also heard her screaming and rushed over to help. "It was very scary," Bogart said. "He's lying there and he's blue. I assumed he's dead, and I didn't even know why he was lying there. I didn't know CPR, but I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, hoping that I could do something." "Is it working?" Connie asked desperately. "No, it's not," Bogart told her. "When I was pregnant, we were so excited to be having a baby," Connie said. "And then we found out it was twins, and he was ecstatic. They were going to be the light of John's life. That's all he could talk about. And here I realized that he could easily never see them." Neighbors Lois Siegle, a registered nurse, and Sharon Burns had also heard Connie and raced to the scene. "When we approached the backyard, we saw John lying on his back, and he looked terrible," Burns said. "He was so blue and so lifeless that I couldn't imagine anybody coming back from that point," Siegle said. The women took over from Bogart and started doing CPR. "She's seven months pregnant. This is a time a lot of babies are born premature, especially twins," said Siegle. "And I'm thinking, 'She's going to go into labor if she doesn't calm down.' They kept telling me, 'You can't get this upset. You have to think about the babies.' At that point, I only wanted to see John wake up. I didn't want those babies without John." Within 8 minutes of the 911 call, Cincinnati Fire Department rescue units arrived on the scene, led by Captain Earl Menkhaus. "When I first saw the victim, he was basically clinically dead," said Menkhaus. "Even though CPR was being applied, there was apparently not much oxygen getting to the victim, because his face was extremely blue. So we immediately proceeded with hooking up the Heartstarter 1000, a semiautomatic defibrillator. This Heartstarter 1000 machine was put on loan to the city of Cincinnati as a test program, because it was believed that a lot of lives could be saved by getting this equipment to people who are on the scene first. This machine showed that he was in a ventricular fibrillation, in which the heart is like a bag of worms beating against itself, and there is no rhythm to it, so that the defibrillator called for a shock." "I kept glancing at him, thinking, "He's just not coming around, and he should be by now,' " Siegle said. Then one of the paramedics monitoring John's condition said the magic words: "I got a pulse, guys!" "Okay, let's get him some oxygen," another paramedic said. "When they turned around and said he was breathing on his own, it was like Christmas in July. It was the most wonderful feeling," said Siegle. "And then you just started praying that everything worked out all right." John was taken to Providence Hospital in a coma, where he was examined by emergency physician Daniel Franklin. "Although we knew that CPR had been administered early and that he had been defibrillated early, there was a chance that he would not come out of the coma," Franklin said. "It was a long wait for somebody to tell me that John was going to be okay," Connie said. "But in the back of my mind, I was afraid that the response was going to be "Sorry, Mrs. Allen. Sorry, there was nothing we could do for your husband.' It was such a scary feeling." Finally, she was led in to see him. "I kept trying to take his hand and put it onto my stomach and say to John, 'Feel that. Your daughters are in there. They need you. You have to wake up.' They thought that maybe if you gave him a loud yell with a familiar voice, he'd wake up. So all night long I had been yelling, 'John! John!' And this time I yelled, 'John!' and he just sat up and turned his head from side to side and he just smiled." He had been in the coma for 20 hours. The heart failure John suffered when he was electrocuted left him with no permanent damage. "I feel really lucky," John said. "This year alone, I've been blessed with twins and recovered from a near-fatal accident. I'm the luckiest guy in the world." "There's not a day that goes by when I see John with the babies and I don't think, 'They could have been without this,' " Connie said. "I'm so grateful. I'm so happy for them that they get to have a daddy like John." When the accident was investigated, it was discovered that the improperly grounded, frayed hedge trimmer cord was responsible for John's electrocution when he touched the metal fence. "Had that two-pronged adapter not been on the plug when he got the shock, the trimmers would have immediately turned off," Connie said. "When John was in his coma, I was promising him that he could play golf whenever he wanted, and that he would never have to do yard work again." "She lied," John said, laughing. "It's funny, because your perspective changes so dramatically when something like this happens. You really focus on the important things in life, like your family and your kids. And that's what's important to me." "I'm so grateful to Reed and Sharon and Lois, and that rescue squad," Connie said. "They saved John's life, and that means everything to us. So therefore they mean everything to us." Category:1991 Category:Ohio Category:Electrocution